September 25, 2005

Priorities!

I have no idea why thisChicago Tribune piece about Barak Obama's trip to Ukraine and Russia had to be so ridiculously detailed—at one point we get to hear Obama quip, "I didn't know Lenin was a player" during a jaunt to Moscow; um...—but all the same, it's nice to see at least one major politician take an interest in nuclear proliferation and arms control.

It tends to get lost in all the din, but at the end of the day, nothing else matters nearly as much when it comes to national security. With a nuclear weapon in tow, terrorists really could destroy the United States—if not economically, then through the inevitable police state that would emerge after an attack. (Yes, I'm tinfoil enough to believe it.) But without nukes, bin Laden, Zawahiri, Zarqawi, and all the rest are just two-bit lunatics who can kill a lot of people—thousands, even—but in a fundamental way can't and won't ever destroy Western civilization. (Unless, you know, we pull it off for them.) It's that simple. And yet very few people seem all that interested in, for instance, securing all the loose nukes floating around the former Soviet Union. See, e.g., here. So good for Obama for taking this seriously, and good for Richard Lugar—one of the few who actually does obsess over loose nukes—for taking him under his wing. Now start spreading the word.